Key mocked for 'Iraq war is over' comment

Green Party MP Keith Locke has ridiculed comments by National's leader John Key that the war in Iraq is over.
On the House blog: Don't mention the war

Mr Key today explained National's failure to mention Iraq in its foreign policy discussion paper, released yesterday, by downplaying the significance of the conflict.

"Frankly the war in Iraq is over," he said in an interview on Radio New Zealand.

"The war was over in a very short period of time and you've now got a situation where the main coalition forces are looking to withdraw their efforts out of Iraq."

Mr Key said the conflict was not a major New Zealand foreign policy issue as a Key-led government would not send troops to Iraq.

But Mr Locke said Mr Key's comments were staggering and he hoped he would phone United States President George Bush to tell him the "good news".

"Until Mr Key put me wise I had assumed the US and its coalition allies were bogged down fighting an intractable insurgency in Iraq that had seen a surge in US troop numbers earlier this year."

About 800 US troops and 13,600 Iraqi civilians had died this year alone and the US Congress had recently endorsed an extra $150 million for "the war in Iraq and Afghanistan".

Mr Locke said despite National's attempts to sell its foreign policy as bipartisan there were some key differences with Labour's.

While the Government made the foreign deployment of New Zealand troops dependent on a UN mandate, National didn't.

"Most people would see that as a huge difference - but these are clearly the sort of negative people who lack National's firm conviction that peace has broken out in Iraq."

In a separate interview on TVNZ's Breakfast programme, Mr Key said he could not rule out keeping New Zealand First leader Winston Peters as Foreign Minister under a National-led government.

"We're not going to know those things until we know what the election result is. That might be one of his demands," he said.

"We have to go and see what the electorate delivers."

- NZPA